The Oklahoma Media Center is working with Blue Engine Collaborative, a nationally known network of news business coaches, to launch a training program to examine the digital user experience and help local newsrooms identify and implement new ways to drive revenue.
The training cohort, which focuses on improving digital news products, audience engagement and streamlining the overall online experience, brings together 11 newsrooms from across the state. Newsrooms within OMC’s collaborative network were invited to apply in early April. The selected participants are:
- Broken Arrow Sentinel
- Enid News & Eagle
- The Frontier
- Investigate Midwest
- Langston Gazette
- NonDoc
- OETA
- OU Daily
- The Oklahoma Eagle
- Tulsa World
- VNN
Led by David Grant, director of partnerships at Blue Engine, the program will work in-depth with each newsroom to reimagine their digital experiences, identify pain points and implement strategic improvements. Blue Engine will audit every facet of a newsroom’s online presence and engage with them in specialized one-on-one coaching sessions over a multi-week period, culminating in measurable product enhancements that can be shown with hard numbers.
“Blue Engine’s program explores all aspects of a newsroom’s revenue streams, emphasizing the importance of user experience,” said Grant. “We’ll be asking tough questions — what makes a great digital product, what truly connects with audiences and how we can reduce the friction that keeps users from engaging fully with the news.”
Blue Engine coaches include Cierra Hinton and Rebecca Meyer for the OMC cohort, which is supported by a grant from the Oklahoma City-based Kirkpatrick Foundation.
Participants will receive stipends to continue to implement the changes identified throughout the training and will report their results in OMC group meetings later this year. The lessons gleaned from this experience will serve as a key rubric for other newsrooms across Oklahoma and will help bolster local news in the digital age.
“This workshop is a key part of the OMC’s nonprofit mission to support sustainable local information through innovation, training and collaboration,” said OMC Executive Director Rob Collins. “By reaching audiences where they are with relevant content, we can more effectively engage folks with documented, verified news in local communities.”
A nonpartisan 501(c)(3) that supports and strengthens local news, OMC includes more than 30 news outlets statewide, ranging from broadcast to nonprofit to Indigenous and Black-owned media outlets to longstanding publications.